Safari 4.0 released: great browser, love the new design
I just installed the latest browser release from Apple: Safari 4.0 beta. (Hat-tip to Konane for the note this morning about it.)
Safari can be installed by any Windows or Mac user (not just for Macs).
The new design reminds me of Google's Chrome browser, but is not as radical. I would say the new Safari looks "just right".
More than anything, I am so happy that Apple got rid of the frameless window and dull gray background in version 3.x. I really did not like the look of it.
The new look, however, uses the standard Windows frames like every other browser does, but the tabs are in the window's title bar like Google Chrome. I think that's a nice way to save space.
Like Chrome, you can drag a tab out of the window to put the web page in its own window. That's a really sweet feature.
There are only two design decisions that I don't care for:
- The tabs always take up the entire window width, so if only one tab is open, the tab is almost as wide as the window itself. That's just strange.
- The Refresh button is too small and hard to find. (It sits within the Address entry space, on the right side.)
When testing the new Safari 4.0 beta with Lottery Post, I found a couple things that don't work properly with the text editor.
- When using the text editor, be careful when you press the Backspace key on your keyboard. Pressing it too many times in rapid succession can act as if you clicked the back button. It seems that if you're at the beginning of the text and press Backspace, it's like clicking Back. I did that one time while writing this blog, and the AutoSave feature I built into the editor (the "life-ring" toolbar icon) worked properly and allowed me to restore everything I otherwise would have lost.
- The toolbar buttons that open a popup window (such as Insert Image) renders the window in such a way that the whole screen is covered, and you can't interact with anything. Essentially, if you click open a window, you need to refresh the page in order to get control back. Again, the auto-save button saved my butt. After refreshing, I clicked the restore button and got everything back.
This is a beta browser, so a few glitches are expected and I'm not surprised.
Overall, Safari looks like it will be a very strong contender. So many great browsers to choose from!
